Online seminar followed by Q&A – all welcome. NB – all times given in UK time.
Global momentum is growing for reforestation. Restoring tree cover across the globe has the potential to capture substantial carbon, while offering many important benefits such as clean air, clean water, improved livelihoods, and habitat for biodiversity. However, the mitigation potential of reforestation, as well as costs and co-benefits, will vary depending on location and type of reforestation practice. This talk will describe our efforts to resolve uncertainty around reforestation as a climate solution by examining how cost and benefits vary across the globe and by the approach taken to restore trees to the landscape.
Susan Cook-Patton is a Senior Forest Restoration Scientist on the Natural Climate Solutions Science Team at The Nature Conservancy. She works to quantify the climate mitigation potential of reforestation and other natural climate solutions and infuse the best-available science into policy decisions. To do this, she collaborates with scientists across the globe, and from academic, government, and other non-governmental organizations.
She has over a decade of experience leading scientific investigations into how changes in biodiversity and climate are impacting forest, grassland, and urban ecosystems. Before joining the Nature Conservancy in 2016, she was a policy fellow at the US Forest Service and a research fellow at the Smithsonian Institution. Susan holds a PhD in Community Ecology from Cornell University, and bachelor degrees in Biology, Psychology and English from Indiana University.
Her publications cover topics ranging broadly from invasive species to prehistoric Native American middens to climate change impacts on mangrove forests. Her work can be found in leading journals, such as Nature, Nature Climate Change, Science Advances, and Global Change Biology. As an avid proponent of effective science communication, she has shared much of her research with the public via videos for grade school classrooms, public lectures, and major news outlets such as National Public Radio, the BBC and The Guardian.
